Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

• First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
• Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
certain_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
electric_pizza_pan is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
wound_care_nurse is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
personal_computer_mouse is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
scutari is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
adrian_fenty is the leader of the city dc	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
san_antonio is a city that lies on the river grand	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
phillips_theme_tower is related to pepperdine	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tyco_healthcare is headquartered in the state or province massachusetts	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mexico is a country located in the geopolitical location north_america	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0